Never mind missiles, stay on the rails By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - It was one thing for reports to spread that the North Koreans were
planning to launch an upgraded long-range ballistic missile far over Japan. It
was quite another for North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, micro-managing
tensions on the Korean Peninsula, to postpone test runs of the first
North-South Korean rail links since the Korean War.
Rumors of a possible missile test were the stuff of newspaper headlines, but
not exactly of daily concerns. For one thing, even if North Korea did happen to
test a missile, it was not going to fly over South Korean territory and would
not have the slightest impact, on landing somewhere far out in the ocean beyond
Japan, on the surging South Korean economy.
Not that another launch of the missile, dubbed the Taepodong after the name of
the village on the northeast coast from which North Korean scientists are
developing this apparition of mass destruction, would not zoom through the
headlines for at least a day or two. There would be the usual outcry from Japan
- hardly viewed as a distress signal to Koreans - and then the story would fade
away, settling into a morass of analyses and statements of little concern on
the streets of Seoul.
The North-South train links, though, are another matter. News from Pyongyang of
postponement of the first test runs of the trains, covering more than 12
kilometers of new track from south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to the new
industrial zone at Gaesong and, on the east coast, up to the tourist zone at
the base of Mount Kumkang, could hardly have been more embarrassing.
The unification minister, Lee Jong-seok, suffered a devastating loss of face -
so terrible that he dared not show his own face as the rebuff from Pyongyang
sunk in on distressed South Korean leaders. Instead, it was up to the vice
unification minister, Shin Eon-sang, to hold a hasty press conference calling
"for sincere measures" from the North to "execute the test run at an early
date".
The postponement was all the more embarrassing since Lee has been talking up
the Gaesong zone as an enclave of capitalism in a communist state, a model of
free enterprise in which South Korean companies hire North Korean workers for
US$57.50 a month turning out products for sale in South Korea and export
to the world. He preferred, of course, to ignore the obvious, that the workers
saw none of this money, which went into North Korean hands, while slaving away
under tight controls over which South Korean managers had not the slightest
authority.
For years, as South Korea pursued reconciliation with the North, the trains
have been the symbol not just of inter-Korean commerce by land but of the dream
of North-South reunification and ultimately of commerce through North Korea and
on through Siberian Russia to Europe. To be sure, South Korea has had to foot
all the expertise, technology and money for building the two new rail links,
but to the South's reconciliation-minded government, this sacrifice was small
change, an investment in a future of pan-Korean unity.
North Korea's response, however, suggests the tensions that are building as the
North uses the rail links as another chip in the bargaining to try to tip the
balance on the Korean Peninsula - and turn South Korea away from unmistakable
signs of a drift to conservatism. The buildup to the rebuff was evident, in
retrospect, from the failure of military talks on measures needed to guarantee
safety of travel through the 4km-wide Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas
and into the Gaesong economic zone, right above the northern edge of the DMZ.
The North Koreans in their message to the South cited the failure to arrive at
security guarantees - a cover for the refusal of North Korean officers to
provide a glimpse into the array of defenses above the line. All that's visible
from the road that parallels the tracks into the Gaesong zone is barren hills,
stripped bare for firewood, but beyond those hills lurk long-range artillery
pieces capable of firing as far as this booming capital just 50km to the south
of the line.
Equally important, North Korea turned the talks into a forum for demanding that
the South do away with the "northern limit line" - the dotted line on maps of
the Yellow Sea below which North Korean boats are banned by the South. The line
was established not in the truce talks that ended the Korean War in July 1953
but afterward by the United Nations Command, the structure within which the
United States marshaled allied nations in the war. The show of a broad alliance
dissipated after the war, but the command remains, as does the limit line, and
South Korea refuses to budge on any intrusion into rich fishing grounds for
fear they will only lead to more intrusive demands.
The North Korean message to the South contained one other ominous rationale for
pulling out of the rail talks - "unstable conditions in the South". The real
point here is that North Korea sees conservatives winning most of the seats,
including that of the mayor of Seoul, in local elections coming up next
Wednesday.
The conservative groundswell has grown since an ex-convict who happened to
belong to the ruling Uri Party attacked the chairwoman of the conservative
Grand National Party, Park Geun-hye, with a box-cutter, inflicting a gash on
her face that required 60 stitches. The local rumor mill sees the would-be
assassin as carrying out a plot on behalf of far-left activists, who view Park,
daughter of the late Park Chung-hee, as embodying the evils of her dictatorial
father, assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979.
The specter of a reversion to conservative rule sends the Pyongyang propaganda
mill into rhetorical fits. Even if conservatives do well next Wednesday,
however, the left-of-center government of President Roh Moo-hyun will be in
power until the next presidential election in December of next year.
Until then, North Korea can play on divisions and fears in the South, spurring
on activists to rally against US forces, stopping and starting North-South rail
links - and, now and then, earning headlines by threatening missile tests.
Right now, the possibilities for a test are murky - even to the experts reading
the images from spy satellites.
Yes, they've seen what's called "activity" around the site, signs of
construction, truck movements, new pavement, but what does it all mean?
Analysts concede, however, that such clues may all be part of the game of
revving up tensions. A similar round of "activity" sparked speculation last
year that the North was planning to explode an atomic bomb.
All that's known for sure is that North Korea has the built the propulsion
system to launch Taepodong 2, the successor to Taepodong 1, test-fired over
Japan on August 31, 1998. The notion of this missile actually landing on a
target, as far away as Hawaii, Alaska or the west coast of the contiguous
United States, appears so unlikely as to assume irrelevance.
In the Great Game for the Korean Peninsula, the failure to run the train raises
a much more immediate question: What will North Korea do next to ratchet up
tensions as South Korea moves inexorably toward disillusionment and possible
rejection of the Sunshine Policy initiated by Kim Dae-jung during his
presidency from 1998-2003?
The fact that Kim, in retirement, plans to go to Pyongyang in mid-June adds to
the tensions. DJ, as he is still known, ardently wished to go by train - a
dream that appears as unlikely of fulfillment as all the other hopes engendered
by his meeting with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in the one and only North-South
summit in June 2000.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been in and out of Korea since 1972.
